The Federal Government says the age pension will be excluded from a wide-ranging review of the welfare system.

The review into the Disability Support Pension (DSP) and the Newstart allowance is due to be handed to the Government in February and is likely to recommend making it tougher for people to qualify for the payments.

Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews says a new report shows income support payments are now costing the Government $70 billion a year and he is concerned they are becoming unsustainable.

Mr Andrews says one in five Australians is receiving an income support payment.

But he has ruled out touching the age pension.

"At this stage we are looking at other income support payments, but not the age pension," he said.

The man who will lead the review has previously recommended a universal welfare payment, with extra loadings depending on individual circumstances but the Government has indicated that is unlikely in the short term.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten had raised concerns the Government would target the age pension in the crackdown.

Your say

I'm glad they think DSP is so easy to get onto. My husband ended up on DSP while waiting for a liver transplant & the number of "hoops" we had to jump through was ridiculous.

Mr Shorten based his claim about the age pension on an interview Mr Andrews gave to ABC's NewsRadio in which he highlighted the inconsistency of the unemployment benefit rate being indexed at a different rate to the DSP.

Labor sources believe that because the disability pension is indexed the same as the age pension, Australia's 2 million pensioners should be worried.

Mr Shorten says people on the age pension do not "deserve to be on the chopping block".

"I think all Australians understand that people on the age pension have paid taxes their whole life," he said.

The number of people receiving Newstart has fluctuated over the 10 years to 2012, with a decline to 399,401 recipients in 2008, down from more than 500,000 in 2002.

However, that figure jumped after the global financial crisis and was just shy of 550,000 people in 2012.

The Government says the number of people on the pension has grown by 20 per cent in the past decade and the cost to the budget in the last financial year was $15 billion.

"Unfortunately if you take something like the DSP at the present time, it's a set and forget system," Mr Andrews said.

"People go onto the DSP and they're virtually left on there and after a few years on the DSP it's unlikely they're going to be able to work again."

But Mr Andrews says the Government is not looking at retrospective measures.

"This is not about tossing people off welfare who are there at the present time," he said.

"It's about recognising the reality that the population is ageing ... and that means that in the future there will be more people who are dependent upon income support payments and also means that we see a very substantial shrinkage in the growth of the work force."

Mr Shorten says the Government should instead look at making cuts to its paid parental leave scheme.

"Get rid of this gold-plated paid parental leave scheme," he said.

"If they want to tackle the real problems, don't start at the bottom of the heap. Don't start at the people who haven't got a voice."

But Mr Andrews has dismissed that.

"A paid parental leave scheme is a work force-related entitlement and it does address the very thing that I'm talking about," he said.

"What we need in Australia in the future is two things. We need more workers and we need obviously to maintain the birth rate.

"About a quarter to one-third of economic growth comes through your population growth alone and maintaining a birth rate is a measure which counters some of the impact of the ageing of the population."